Procedures for Performing a Disaster Recovery Failover in Lync Server 2010, Group Chat

If you use Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Group Chat for mission-critical business purposes, as many customers do, you must ensure that your organization can maintain Lync Server 2010, Group Chat communications even when an entire site, including the Microsoft Lync Server Enterprise pool that hosts Lync Server 2010, Group Chat, is lost. For this reason, we strongly recommend that your organization have a detailed disaster recovery plan.

To preserve Group Chat Server functionality when a site is lost, a secondary pool, located at a different site, must be available that can take over when the primary pool fails, and a failover mechanism must transfer operations to the secondary pool. This article serves as a guide for failing over Group Chat Server from one pool to another.

The overall process for restoring Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Group Chat to a different Microsoft Lync Server 2010 pool involves backing up the Lync Server 2010, Group Chat database, restoring the data to the target database, and moving the users (forced move) to the new pool. This is followed by providing permissions to the Lync Server 2010, Group Chat accounts.

Notes

The process described in this article is different from the process for leveraging site resiliency in Lync Server 2010. Site resiliency assumes the loss of a site but not the loss of services. Site resiliency is typically achieved by spanning Lync Server pools and services across sites.

The process described in this article is intended for the recovery of services, not for data recovery. The data recovered from the Group Chat database during this process is determined by the method and frequency of the backups. Any associated services or programs, such as for compliance, will require manual intervention.

Tested Scenarios

This white paper addresses two failure scenarios:

The first scenario provides the steps for failing over a Group Chat Server to another Group Chat Server connected to the same Lync Server Front End pool.

The second scenario provides the steps required to recover a Group Chat environment to a Group Chat Server that is connected to a second Lync Server Front End pool.

In both scenarios, it is assumed that the primary Front End pool is unavailable because of a disaster or failure.

Overview of the Failover Process

The overall process for restoring Group Chat Server to a secondary Group Chat Server in the same Front End pool involves the following high-level steps.

Restoring the Group Chat database to SQL Server on the secondary site.

Installing Group Chat Server on the secondary site and connecting to SQL Server on the secondary site.

Configuring the secondary Group Chat Server.

Running the Group Chat Configuration tool.

The overall process for restoring Group Chat Server to a secondary Group Chat Server in a secondary Front End pool involves the following high-level steps.

Backing up the SQL Server database.

Installing SQL Server on the secondary site.

Preparing the Front End pool in the secondary site.

Moving user accounts to the secondary pool.

Restoring the Group Chat database to SQL Server on the secondary site.

Installing Group Chat Server on the secondary site and connecting to SQL Server on the secondary site.

Configuring the secondary Group Chat Server.

Running the Group Chat Configuration tool.

Summary

Following the steps in the failover process helps your IT organization to correctly fail over Lync Server 2010, Group Chat from one pool to another and preserve its associated business environment. Providing an IT organization the capability to quickly recover the platform – where an entire site and Lync Server pool is lost – is critical for the organization.